Define an Enthusiast CPU...

FM2 poses an interesting quandary for motherboard manufacturers. AMD provides a very robust and full featured chip for use with their processors (A85X) that would lend itself well to midrange and enthusiast class motherboards. Unfortunately, AMD does not provide a similarly high end CPU as compared to the competition at price ranges that would make sense for a motherboard that would cost between $140 and $250 on the FM2 platform.

So these manufacturers are constrained on price to offer fully featured motherboards that take advantage of all aspects of the A85X FCH (Fusion Controller Hub). Until AMD can deliver a more competitive CPU on the FM2 platform, motherboard manufacturers will be forced to design offerings that can really go no higher than $129 (the current price of the fastest A10 processor from AMD). This is not necessarily a bad thing though, as it has forced these manufacturers to really rethink their designs and to focus their energies on getting the greatest bang-for-the-buck. AMD is selling a decent number of these processors, but the market is constrained as compared to the Intel offerings utilizing the 1155 BGA infrastructure.

Gigabyte has taken this particular bull by the horns and have applied a very unique (so far) technology to the board. This is on top of all the other marketing and engineering terms that we are quite familiar with. The company itself is one of the top three manufacturers of motherboards in the world, and they typically trail Asus in terms of shipments but are still ahead of MSI. As with any motherboard manufacturer, the quality of Gigabyte products has seen peaks and valleys through the years. From what I have seen for the past few years though, Gigabyte is doing very well in terms of overall quality and value.

Apart from the model numbers the only solid information of when we will start to hear about AMD's second generation of Trinity APUs is the date, October 2nd is when the NDAs start to expire and we might see some results. Many of the model numbers are relatively familiar, with the A10-5800K, A10-5700, A8-5600K, A8-5500, Athlon X4 750K/740, A6-5400K and A4-5300. New to the chipset family will be the the A55, A75 and A85X, all with Socket FM2. SemiAccurate posted the news here; keep your eyes peeled next week for the actual release.

"Two more interesting tidbits appeared in the news letter, “…platform longevity with FM2 motherboards for future upgrades” and, “AMD Memory Profile Support for automatic performance.” You can read into these statements as far as you’d like, but it appears that AMD is planning on keeping its FM2 socket around for a bit longer than FM1 lasted. Additionally, AMD may finally be rolling out it’s own version of Intel’s XMP predefined RAM overclocking profiles next month."

After launching the mobile version of Trinity, AMD let desktop users know that they could expect to see Socket FM2 processors released in the summer. That may no longer be the case according to a report that DigiTimes heard about which puts the timeline closer to October. Even worse, this delay is due to them making some changes to the processors design which hints at all sorts of horrible possibilities of which the best you can hope is that they are having yield problems. Hoping that AMD just wants to see existing stock of Llano processors sold makes little sense, none of the major tech companies seems to feel any regret at pushing out new designs over top of old ones no matter how much stock currently exists.

Worth noting is that in October, assuming we do see Trinity launch, AMD will have current generation chips and motherboards using AM3, AM3+ (Vishera), FM1 (Llano), FM2 (Trinity) and FT1 (Brazos 2.0). To say that this is going to confuse customers is an understatement.

"AMD has reportedly postponed the launch of its Trinity processors for desktop platforms from August to October in order to make some adjustments to the processors' designs. Downstream motherboard makers are also rushing to make adjustments to their new motherboard projects set to release in the second half, according to sources from motherboard makers."